


don't get too close, it's dark inside

by alanabloom



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, F/M, Nightmares, tipsy Alana and Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 08:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanabloom/pseuds/alanabloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>This is where they exist now, in the space between their words, in each tiny crevice that's nearly bursting with an aching sense of longing.  They both know it's there. They both hear the way it tears at the edges of their syllables, and imbues every sentence with a desperate, wistful desire.</em>  Post "Trou Normand".</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't get too close, it's dark inside

_It's because I think you're unstable._

Alana's words still hang in the air, somehow managing to wedge between them even as her arms go around Will, even as he's hanging onto her like she's the only thing tethering him to reality. Her words are still there, echoing in his ears, and some part of him is already burning with the shame of them, when suddenly other words, Hannibal's, tug forward from his memory.

 _What if you lose time and hurt yourself...or someone else? I don't want you to wake up and see a totem of your own making._

A few nights later, he dreams about her for the first time.

Will never wanted that. All his dreams are nightmares. But he'd crossed a line, and now all the lines are blurred: between his imagination and reality, between desire and terror.

In his dream she comes to him, her skin luminous and bare, her eyes dancing and bright and alive. In his dream she kisses him first, a hungry, fervent rush of color and sound and feeling. His hands glide over her body, touching her everywhere, taking his time, because in his dream she does not pull away.

In his dream his fingers close around a knife that comes from nowhere and thrusts it into her stomach, with the same wild and panicked movements that Abigail killed Nicholas Boyle. 

In his dream Alana looks up at him, and their eyes meet even as he holds the knife inside her, her blood staining his hands. In his dream her face contorts with pain, her eyes cloud with betrayal and fear.

When Will startles awake from the nightmare, trembling and drenched in cold sweat, he has to sit down and make a list, accounting for every second since he last saw Alana. Just to be sure. 

~(W*A)~

"Will?" 

He looks up to see her walking into his empty lecture hall, and it takes him a second to produce a clumsy smile. "Hi."

"Hi."

She's still showing up in his nightmares, has been for the past two weeks, and each time Will wakes up in a strange, unsettling place where desire and panic mingle. When he sees Alana, the real Alana, he can usually get past this, but it always takes a moment.

Alana comes to lean on the edge of the table beside Will, eyeing him. "Good day?" 

"Not bad."

Their tones are so casual, so innocuous, but there is more going on beneath the surface of the words. This question has become Alana's way of asking if he's okay, if he's slept, if he's lost time. His answer has become Will's way of choosing how much he wants her to worry.

"D'you have a session with Hannibal tonight?" 

"No. I saw him this morning." 

There's a moment of silence, and then, casually, Alana suggests, "Want to grab a drink with me, then? I could use one." She smiles with one side of her mouth. "I'm buying." 

Will glances at her, gauging Alana's intent even as he weighs his own wariness and worry against his desire to spend time with her. In spite of the flippant tone of the invitation, there's something nervous and almost desperate in Alana's expression. Like she really wants him to say yes. Like she misses him.

"Sure, sounds great," Will replies immediately, his internal war ending with an easy defeat. 

"Good." Alana flashes him a smile, unmistakable pleasure and relief lighting her eyes. "I'll drive. We can come back to get your car."

He leaves his things and falls into step beside her, and they discuss which bar to go to and whether Alana is really going to insist on buying. This is where they exist now, in the space between their words, in each tiny crevice that's nearly bursting with an aching sense of longing. They both know it's there. They both hear the way it tears at the edges of their syllables, and imbues every sentence with a desperate, wistful desire.

## 

~(W*A)~

"...and this poor kid had clearly expected to spend office hours _ogling_ Hannibal, she looked like Christmas had just been cancelled when she found me there instead."

Will chuckles and takes a sip of his whiskey, but he's silently wishing it wasn't like this, that they didn't have to sit and pretend they needed Hannibal or anything else for common ground . He can hear in her voice that Alana's wishing it, too, that there's something forced and rehearsed in her litany of stories. 

Downing his drink and signaling the bartender for another, Will props his elbow on the bar and looks up at Alana, their laughter fading simultaneously as his eyes lock with hers. He doesn't usually do that, and it's taking a concentrated effort to hold her gaze, but Will needs to see something.

He needs to see how Alana looks at him now.

The last traces of forced mirth from her anecdote fade from Alana's expression. Her eyes go soft around the edges, and they're practically glowing with an unmistakable warmth and gentleness that is so uniquely her.

"Hey." Her voice is quiet and somehow heavy with significance, as if they're really seeing each other for the first time all evening, like some invisible wall between them is crumbling. 

Will lets himself study her eyes for a few moments longer, reading their affection and warmth and, after a few too many beats of silence, confusion. Finally, he smiles a little, relief laced through it and replies in a soft, grateful tone, "Hi."

~(W*A)~

He doesn't want Alana to look at him like he's some broken, pitiable, dangerous thing.

The night he kissed her, the night she came to his house to find a hole hammered into his wall, had been one of his lowest points. He'd been nervous from the moment she showed up, not wanting her to see what he'd done, to understand why.

But Alana was too smart, too good at her job and she'd realized what happened.

_Might've been a raccoon._

_Might've been?_

_By the time I knocked a hole in the chimney, it had climbed out the top._

And there it was. A heartbeat of hesitation before Alana recovered, before she said _Well, at least it got out_...in that space, that was when she knew. And Will had glanced back, seen the change in her face, the _knowing_ , and for some reason, Alana knowing felt like the worse part of it.

It made him bold. It fueled him. And that's why Will found himself kissing her, finally _finally_ kissing Alana Bloom, just moments after making it clear why he shouldn't be. He'd wanted to change her face again, to make him see him as something other than Unstable. So he kissed her.

But he couldn't erase the knowing. And his nightmares are there to remind him why he shouldn't want to.

~(W*A)~

"I like your necklace."

Alana's fingers drift automatically to the gold starfish around her neck, giving it a small flick. The bar in front of them is getting increasingly cluttered with empty glasses and beer bottles. They keep ordering without discussing it, as though there's some unspoken agreement to keep the night going as long as possible.

"You wear it a lot," Will observes; there's the slightest slur to his voice, and he's struggling to keep his eyes from drifting below the tiny gold charm.

"Mmmmm," Alana murmurs noncommittally. She takes a swig from her current beer, and then says, "My oldest brother, Jamie, got it for me when I was little. He was seventeen and going to a beach house with a bunch of friends for spring break. First big vacation on his own, sort of thing. I was eight and I couldn't wrap my brain around the concept. Why weren't the rest of us going, too? Why didn't _I_ get to go the beach? I really wasn't getting it. Made a huge deal. But Jamie knew just how to play me. He said if I came with him, he wouldn't be able to bring me a present. So I dropped it, and he came back with this."

Alana winds the gold chain around her fingers, rolling it absently up and down on her neck. She drinks more beer, and Will's thinking that he wants to know all her stories when Alana sets the now empty bottle back on the bar and continues, "He died in a car wreck a couple weeks after he got back."

Will lifts his eyes to hers for the second time in their long conversation. For the first time, he can glimpse something bruised and broken in her. It's something he recognizes. 

"I'm sorry." His hand covers hers on top of the bar, and for a nanosecond Alana tenses like she might pull away, and Will's stomach tightens as he remembers his nightmares and all the reasons he shouldn't be so close. But in the next instance, Alana lifts her fingers slightly, threading them through his, and gives him a small smile.

Suddenly Alana frowns, eyes slightly unfocused, words slower and more halting than usual. "I don't know why I told you that. I think it felt strange that you didn't know. Is that weird?"

"No." Will shakes his head for a little too long. "No, it's not weird. You know about all my, y'know..." He twirls his finger spastically next to his head and tries for a self-deprecating smile that comes out more like a grimace.

Alana's expression darkens a little, and she studies him like she might protest and is trying to get the words together. Before she can, however, the bartender announces last call.

They blink in confusion. "Already?" Alana looks at her watch. They realize at the same time that they're still holding hands, and she disentangles her fingers as he pulls away. 

"I'm afraid if I stand up, I'll fall," Alana says blithely.

Will nods in agreement. "I don't think either of us is driving either of our cars back."

~(W*A)~

The bartender calls them a cab, and Alana loops her arm through the crook in his elbow as the walk out of the bar. The cab ride is quiet, and at one point Alana lets out a tired sigh and rests her head against his shoulder. Will breathes in the scent of her, and he thinks of their kiss. On the heels of that thought, though, come the images from his nightmares, as visceral as any memory, and it's all Will can do not to nudge her off him, for her own good.

They get to her house first, and Alana sits up, looking disoriented. 

"I'll walk you up," Will murmurs, before turning to the cabbie. "I'll just be a second."

"Sure about that?" The man smirks at him, trying for a conspiratorial wink, but Will just shakes his head dismissively. 

"Keep it running."

"You don't have to walk me," Alana tells him, though her hand fumbles for his and holds on tight, the gesture contradicting her words. 

"I don't mind." 

"Sorry I'm such a crappy designated driver." 

Will laughs quietly. "I don't mind that either."

They reach her front door and Alana lets go of his hand to turn to look at him, expression pained. "And I'm sorry about this."

Will's eyebrows knit in confusion. "About what?"

"Tonight. Inviting you out. I didn't...I don't want to confuse you, or make it harder or anything. I just..." Alana sighs, looking annoyed at her own level of inebriation, and the way it's robbed her of the ability to be articulate. "I miss you."

"It's okay," Will says, and he means it. "I miss you, too. And friends can go get drinks together." He tries out a grin. "Or get drunk together, to be more accurate."

She doesn't laugh, though, staring at him with utmost sincerity. "I do want to be your friend, still. I meant that. And also you should know...it's not just you. This is...hard. For me, too. I want more. I wish things were different."

"Me, too," he says softly. He's silently praying she doesn't use to word "unstable" again. As right as she is, he doesn't know if he can take it.

"It's just...I _can't_." Her voice catches. "I can't do it again. My mother, after Jamie, she wasn't..." Alana sighs and waves her hand dismissively, like she's swatting a particularly persistent mosquito. "I know what can happen, how people can just lose it, and hurt the people they love without even...." She trails off, setting her jaw, looking angry with herself again. But behind the anger, Will gets another glimpse of that brokenness. Paradoxically, it makes him want to hold her, but also get far away before he becomes just another person who hurts her. 

"It's okay," he says gently. He sense that she needs to know he gets it, that he doesn't hate her for hurting him. He gets it all too well. "I know you're right. If...if I ever hurt you, I couldn't live with myself."

She lifts her eyes to his. "Don't go hurting yourself, either, okay? I maybe couldn't live with _that_."

"I'll do my best."

Alana hugs him, then, and it's only the intruding thought of his nightmares that allow Will let go and walk away from her, dully reminding himself it's for the best.


End file.
